


don’t wait for me, i can’t come

by nosecoffee



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Compliant, Drug Use, Family Bonding Via Criminal Activity, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Mother/Son Bonding, Pavlikovsky A+ Parenting, Sharing a Bed, because Theo, need i say more?, self hatred, to a fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22714708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: (your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but i do, i think i do)*“Your papa,” his mother whispers, and he notices the way she twists her wedding ring around her finger in her stress, “he is here?”Boris nods slowly, mutely, afraid to speak and still tasting blood in his mouth from where it dripped down from his nose. Hélène swallows and then exhales deeply, one shaking hand reaching down and placing itself in his shaggy mop of hair, her fingers scrunching in his curls and her breath hitching as she goes to speak again. “I’m sorry our love is painful.”
Relationships: Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 3
Kudos: 96





	don’t wait for me, i can’t come

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Your Best American Girl” by Mitski because apparently any Mitski song can trigger a Goldfinch centered daydream that becomes so enticing I must write it no matter what. This happens every time. Keep your eyes peeled for more lmao

_you’re the one, you’re all i’ve ever wanted - i think i’ll regret this..._

The first time Theo meets his mother, it’s not planned.

It’s not as though he keeps tabs on his parents - with his father down a mine most of the time it would be a bit difficult to - but even so, he expects to have the house to himself, that night.

They’re smoking in his room, watching _Casablanca,_ when he suddenly hears the front door opening, downstairs. Boris freezes.

“Dog,” he says, fear entering his bloodstream just as easily as the alcohol they’ve been passing back and forth. “My dad will kill him. _Hurry.”_

Theo’s eyes go wide, and he puts out his cigarette on the bedside table before grabbing Popchyk and lifting the little dog up to his chest.

“What do I-?“ He begins to ask, when a voice from the ground floor interrupts,

“Borya?”

Feminine and slurred. His mother. The panicked fear ebbs and disappears into muted annoyance and exasperation. “Coming, mamulya!” He shouts down. Theo raises an eyebrow, caught somewhere between amused and unsure, but he follows behind as Boris exits the room and descends the stairs.

It was inevitable that he’d have to introduce them, but he’s not particularly in the mood right now. And there she sways in all her drunken glory in the entryway, black eyes glazed over, shoulder length black curls greasy and hanging in her face as she shifts her weight unsteadily from foot to foot. She’s wearing a hole-ridden black sweater with a tear through part of the collar meaning it hangs off of one shoulder, jeans with the knees ripped up, and old zip up boots with the toes scuffed beyond repair. His father doesn’t much care for luxury of any kind, and lord knows his mother isn’t mentally present enough to care much about her appearance, so this outfit is not out of the ordinary.

Boris is just surprised she’s home at all.

She scrutinises his form before her with a vacant stare - sometimes he thinks she’s still in Australia, in her mind - and then she looks over his shoulder. “Borya, who is your friend?” She asks in halting English, voice hoarse and gruff. She is not a soft spoken woman in any sense of the word, and she never has been.

“Mamulya, this is Potter,” Theo digs his bony elbow into his ribs and Boris coughs, “I _mean_ Theo Decker. _Theo,_ this is my mama, Hélène Pavlikovskaya.”

She holds out her hand to Theo, who shakes it politely. He gets like this around adults he doesn’t know, all shy and polite. Boris assumes he was raised to be this nice to strangers, to those rich people he stayed with in New York. He doesn’t use those nice manners here. Bar this, and distracting attendants at the supermarket, he’s never seen Theo actually show any interest in an adult. “Nice to meet you,” he says slowly, obviously faking sobriety, which would be hysterical if the circumstances were different. If Hélène were not his mother, this gathering of drunk people attempting to function in the entryway would be fucking sit-com material. Just the idea of his mother meeting his best friend for the first time while they’re all shitfaced is enough to justify a chuckle. But it’s not all that funny to Boris.

It’s kind of fucked up to him.

“Yes,” she responds, equally as slowly, and upon releasing Theo’s hand, turns back to Boris and asks, voice lowered, awareness in her eyes, “Your papa is not home, da, Borya?”

“Nyet, mamulya,” he replies, easily, abating her fears. The awareness recedes from her face. Boris knows they’d both be in for it if his father was home. Boris for smoking his cigarettes, drinking his booze, and bringing an animal into his house. Hélène for - well, for being home after so long of _not_ being home. They barely cross paths these days, and Boris doesn’t know where she stays when she doesn’t come home but he knows she does it to stay away from his father. But really, she’d catch his cane for being drunk at all.

Hypocrite that his father is, he’s at least consistent in his hatred of her drinking. He’s always hated it, even from the innocent start, just a beer at the pub, with Judy. Well, that didn’t turn out too well, and by the time they were living in New Guinea, they may as well have not been related for all they interacted, as Hélène faded into obscurity, muddled and fuzzed out by the liquor. Boris knows his father especially hates her drinking for the time when Boris was only small and he’d gotten some extra money. Family man he was then, he took them to a bigger city, a big hotel suite with big windows and views stretching out as far as the eye could see. His parents both drank their fair share of vodka that night, but when the fighting started, it was her who kept drinking. It was his father who opened the window, and it was her own stupid fault for sitting on the ledge when she was so unsteady.

She still has the scars on her scalp and collarbone and wrists from the fall and the cracking landing.

Funny that his father hates her drinking for the fact that she might get hurt again, and to make her stop he hurts her. Truly ironic, though Boris would never say so out loud.

“Good,” she nods, the glaze returning to her eyes, “I am going to bed. You should too. School tomorrow.”

No sense in protesting, “Da, mamulya.”

“Off to bed, then. Good night.” She kisses him on the cheek and then turns to Theo and does the same. Her breath is sharp with vodka and lime, her lips are dry and chapped. Her slow thudding steps through the ceiling as she gets ready for bed are the only sign she was ever there.

“Well,” Theo says, lowly, “she’s really something.”

“Da,” Boris agrees, and fights back the bitterness in his tone as he adds, “a real piece of work.”

“What, you don’t love her?”

“Of course I love her. Would be stupid, sick in the head, not to love my mama. But love is difficult when the object of your love will not do a thing to save themself. Love her, da. Like her?” He sniffs. “Nyet.”

“Oh.”

“Come on. We have to finish the movie.” Theo follows him back upstairs but he sees him gaze at the closed bedroom door his mother has disappeared behind. He understands, she really is _something,_ though not something he understands. He thinks understanding her may make him hate her.

~

They’ve been awake all night. Larry and Xandra didn’t come home, which works fine for them. They’re listening to songs all tinny from Theo’s iPod, but it’ll run out of charge any minute now.

Their feet are in the pool and their backs are on the ground, watching the sky change colours.

“Why does she drink?” Theo suddenly asks.

“Who?” Boris asks, turning on his side. Theo’s wearing his _Never Summer_ shirt, but Boris just decided not to wear one. Theo only blushed a little when he discarded it in the living room.

“Your mother,” he clarifies and Boris frowns.

“Why do we breathe?” He responds and Theo huffs at his non-answer. To placate him, he adds, “It helps us live, Potter. If we did not breathe, would not get very far, hm?”

 _“Boris,”_ he grinds this out like he’s annoyed, but Theo is never actually annoyed with him. Boris has never pushed him to that point, before. He hopes he never does, but the beauty of fear is that it fuels bad behaviour all the same.

He sighs and sits up, looking out across the glimmering water of the pool, “Truth is, she was just a kid when she had me. _Sixteen.”_ Theo sits up too and watches him earnestly through his round glasses. “She lived in Petersburg, was training to be a ballerina. Met my father and _everything_ went downhill.”

He’s heard her tell the story millions of times, back when she used to let Boris take care of her after fights with his father, when he’d be down a mineshaft and they could speak freely to each other for a bit. Hélène would be just drunk enough to divulge her life story and Boris would patiently listen, pulling off her shoes, braiding back her hair, tucking her in with a bin by the bed and a glass of water on the nightstand, because he may have been young but he loved his mama.

“When you are in love you make stupid decisions, you do stupid things,” Boris says, as if he’s reciting a line from a script. It’s something his mother has said every time she tells the story. She’s drilled it into his head. Every time Boris goes to do something reckless, something that could hurt him or another person, he does stop and wonder if he’s doing it out of impulse or if he’s doing it to impress someone, if he’s doing it _for_ someone. “She decided to run away with him, he told her she could be a ballerina anywhere with him, he’d take her everywhere and she could be the ballerina who travelled the world.” He pauses, grimly, and sighs, “Is hard to dance though, when you are pregnant.”

“Oh,” Theo says, and has the decency to look sheepish.

Boris kicks at the water, feeling too vulnerable because of everything he’s said tonight. _“Anyway,_ after I am here, she drinks only rarely, saying she needs a little help some days. But the more violent and reproachful my papa got, the more she drank to cope, until she couldn’t cope at all. So she isn’t coping now, she’s drinking because it’s what she knows and she feels naked and vulnerable without it to mute everything.”

Theo considers this for a moment and then lights a cigarette. “Fuck,” he says, and his iPod dies, plunging them into the deafening, haunting silence of the desert.

“Yes,” Boris agrees, after a moment. “What a pair they make.”

Theo passes his cigarette to Boris when he gestures for it. “So, she if was sixteen when she had you, that would make her how old?”

“Thirty one,” he replies, a bit put out that they haven’t abandoned the topic yet. Nevertheless, he continues, “Wasting her life away. Is very sad, I think.”

“You _think?”_ Theo parrots, and Boris rolls his eyes, reaching over to replace the cigarette between Theo’s lips, fingers brushing his chin, briefly.

“Is hard to be sad when she is doing it to herself,” Boris elaborates, gesturing with his hands. “She _could_ get help, but she doesn’t _want_ it; she thinks she has found a kind of help, and she is content in using it.” It’s tiring to think about, that he knows his mother’s excuses for her vices back and front, so he can protect her from anyone who might actually be able to help her. “Let’s talk about something else. Is all a bit depressing.”

“But you’d miss her,” Theo says suddenly, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, abandoned, staring at the surface of the pool with his hands clutching the edge like he’d die if he let go.

“What?” Boris asks, cautiously.

He inhales through his nose, and says, “Say it was _you_ and _your_ mother at the museum, that day. You’d miss her, right?”

“Yes,” He reluctantly agrees, “but she’d never take me to-“

“That’s not the question.” Theo snaps and Boris groans.

“Would you like your mother if she drank like my mama does? Would you like her if she was barely ever there, and when she was she was a shadow and not a person? I am thinking that is worse than death — to have her so near and still be so lonely. I am thinking you just want me to find something worth liking in a woman who made bad choices, and hit rock bottom but refuses to admit that is what happened.”

Theo turns away from him, lips pursed, eyes shining. Boris’ shoulders go slack, and he hangs his head, looking down at the surface of the pool. He’s obviously upset him. It’s just hard to be kind about her when she’s not kind at all. You get what you give and all that - all she’s given is muted indifference and probably a genetic predisposition for alcoholism.

“I am sorry, Potter.” Boris huffs, placing a hand on Theo’s shoulder and squeezing it. “I know you miss your mama, but not everyone loves the way you do.”

“Good,” Theo says, “I don’t love right, anyway.”

Boris furrows his eyebrows, unsure, and asks, “What do you mean?”

Theo turns and kisses him and Boris wonders _what about this isn’t right?_ He never asks, though, because it’s clear that’s not something Theo wants to talk about.

~

She comes home one night after Boris’ father has gone to bed, and Boris is still lying on the carpet in the hallway, trying to get his breathing under control. He doesn’t like to cry when he’s been hit, but sometimes he can’t control it.

He hears the front door creak open and then close quietly, and listens to her soft, slightly off key singing - _there once were two small kitten_ s - and her scuffed shoes dragging against the tiles in the entryway as she walks further into the house. She stops in the hallway by his head. He can see the lining of the inside of her shoe through the hole she’s kicked through the toe.

“Borya,” his mother sighs. He can see her swaying even from here, the way her weight shifts from foot to foot as she struggles to stay standing. It’s not a wonder she fell out a window. She sits down against the wall, her thigh brushing against the hair on his head. Boris twists against the carpet to look at her. People have always commented how similar they look. Right now, she looks the way he does after a bottle of vodka and a joint, eyes hooded and bloodshot, pale, far away. She looked just on the edge of sleep, body untensed and slow in its movements.

He’s not sure when he last saw her sober and active, certainly not for a few years, so he’s not so sure how well that statement stands up for them sober.

“Your papa,” she whispers, and he notices the way she twists her wedding ring around her finger in her stress, giving him a scenic tour of the tarnish on it, “he is here?”

Boris nods slowly, mutely, afraid to speak and still tasting blood in his mouth from where it dripped down from his nose. Hélène swallows and then exhales deeply, one shaking hand reaching down and placing itself in his shaggy mop of hair, her fingers scrunching in his curls and her breath hitching as she goes to speak again. “I’m sorry our love is painful. I wish we were better to you. What lesson is this? Hurt everything you love because this is what you know? Because this is how you were raised to love so it must be right, and if it is not that means we didn’t love you correctly?” Boris lifts a hesitant hand and place it on her knee. “I am sorry, Borya. I hope when you are older you know better.”

There’s a long silence. He hears her breath stutter, feels her body shuddering, and when she finally speaks, Boris knows she’s crying, though he’s not sure why. _There once were two small kittens,_ and he closes his eyes, listening to her sing, even though he knows she’s barely aware of this, won’t remember in the morning, and if he carries it forever with him, that she pet his curls and cried and sang him his favourite lullaby after a beating, it’ll hurt more than it should when she’s gone. If they ever get out of this, and he’s sure they will, this will weigh on him.

_They both were grayish brown._

When Boris wakes up, he’s still in the hallway, and he is alone. There’s a crick in his neck from having slept on the floor, and a dark circle of blood on the carpet where his mouth had been pressed. There’s blood dried on his lips and still present between his crooked teeth.

Hélène sits mutely at the kitchen table, now sporting a black eye, to match his own, and a split lip, looking hungover and wan. She does not meet his eyes as he stands in the doorway to the kitchen. It’s moments like this, still and tense, that he remembers how young she was when she got all mixed up in this. Boris often wonders if she regrets having him. Maybe if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have had to stay.

She suddenly looks up at him and asks, “Don’t you have school today?”

“It’s Sunday, mamulya,” Boris responds, hoarsely.

“Oh.” And then she gets up and brushes past him, up the stairs and into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Boris walks out the door and he doesn’t stop until he gets to Theo’s.

~

He runs the entire way home without stopping. He doesn’t want to cry. If he stops he’ll probably cry, so he just keeps moving and he ignores the ache in his legs, the hot grating feeling of his breath huffing shortly in and out of his lungs, unable to stop and rectify this uncomfortable feeling because the sour lump of tears lingers beneath the grating in his throat, and Boris cannot risk stopping to catch his breath because what if he collapses on the sidewalk and bawls into the empty, dark night that his best friend has left him?

Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt so much if not for the lingering effects of the acid he and Theo dropped earlier, and the coke he’d snorted only half an hour ago, finally starting to hit and making his blood run hot and thin in his veins. Maybe if Theo had actually stopped and listened, if he hadn’t insisted on going _right that minute,_ Boris wouldn’t feel as though he’s literally about to die. But now Theo is gone, and Boris is running home, as if that will actually do him any scrap of good, in the long run.

He promised to follow behind, but how can he? There’s no way he can just go. He can’t take his mother either; if Las Vegas is too much for her, New York City would be a nightmare. And he can’t just leave her here, actually and truly _alone._ With his father having abandoned them in favour of Australia, she’s sunk even further into her drink, becoming an unmoving pile under the covers in the master bedroom, indifferent to the goings-on of the world and willing to let herself die as she has no real way to save herself. With no money coming into the house, he’ll surely perish by her side.

If he looks at it like that, it was incredibly selfish of him, asking Boris to leave everything, his belongings, his life in Vegas, his mother behind. How can he really make him promise to let her waste away in this unforgiving desert?

(Boris doesn’t think about how he asked the same of him only a few weeks earlier, when Theo wasn’t in any real threat of relocation, and Boris was just asking Theo to run away with him. He won’t be a hypocrite. It was different then, he was too high to really think on it.)

In his position, would Theo leave his mother behind for Boris? The answer, he knows, will always be _no._ If Boris could rouse her enough, would he even survive with an alcoholic, absent mother in New York, with Theo? Would they be able to carry on in another city with adults who would actually love Theo? Would they look down on Boris like something dirty and obscene, these upper-class twats that seem better to Theo than staying with him?

Boris reaches the driveway and collapses on the cement, knees buckling underneath him as he suddenly slows down after a few miles of a steady running pace.

Now the tears come, despite his reproach and fight — they claw at his throat, and it’s too painful, no it’s too much, his heart is bleeding out everything, every emotion and person who belongs to it, emptying, while his head buzzes and spins, so full, far too full, and now he knows he’s going to die, just like his mother will — slowly, painfully, abandoned and unloved, trapped in a country that has been cruel to them, out in the empty desert that doesn’t care for them at all. Boris sobs loud enough to be classified as screams, and strikes the ground underneath him with closed fists, over and over again, just to feel the sharp reality of the physical pain, because he barely feels alive, everything’s so loud and fuzzy.

He slowly loses the energy to hit the ground, and after a while, his sobs quiet, and his face dries with sticky abandoned tear tracks.

What to do now? A new day is ahead of them, while his head is full of cotton, mouth dry as bone, and his heart has run out of blood and oxygen to keep it working, going still in his chest. The sky begins to lighten. Boris has to make a choice.

He can lie here until he starves and turns to just another carcass for the coyotes to gnaw and tear at, he can let his mother lie in that bed forever, allow Theo’s bird to hide in his closet forever, let Theo wonder what happened to him until one day he comes across the article of the deaths of Boris and Hélène Pavlikovsky, starved in their own home, priceless artwork discovered in bedroom. Or he can get up. He can get to his feet and rouse his mother. Tell her, “Mamulya, there’s work to be done. We’re not finished yet.”

He can sell Xandra’s jewellery and blow, add the money from that to the cash he already has, and go somewhere, anywhere but here. Make something of himself. Anything. Something better than a corpse in the driveway. He’s coming down and calming down and he’s watching the sky change colour before his very eyes. He’s never done this before. He wishes Theo could see it.

Boris sits up. _That’s enough,_ he thinks. _Enough wallowing._ They can go anywhere, he’s sure of it. They can go to Petersburg, where his mother grew up, where his uncle Luka lives and sends letters that his mother never responds to. He can beg for a place to stay until Boris can get a place for them, a job, something that helps him figure out how to keep them alive, and, perhaps, help them thrive.

Boris gets to his feet, and he walks into the house.

~

He gets lucky. He gets so very, extremely lucky. Pawning off the jewellery and selling the blow go off without a hitch, proving very lucrative with his already honed skill in haggling prices and making himself seem more intimidating than he is. No one shows up to arrest him once his suitcase has gone through security at the airport when they leave Las Vegas, which means no one’s noticed the fuck-off priceless artwork tucked inside of it — which _means_ he arrives in St Petersburg with it safely in tow, along with his mother.

Boris is lucky his uncle attempted to stay in contact with Hélène, because his return address is printed in neat handwriting on every letter he sent, and he’s lucky that when they turn up on his doorstep, Luka lets them in and tells them to stay as long as they like.

Hélène takes to this easily, holing up either in the guest room or at the kitchen table, mostly catatonic or drunk, coaxed often to eat and bathe and sent to bed by her brother who watches her with disbelief and pain. He confesses to Boris a few days after their arrival that he never thought he’d see her again, and yet seeing her like this almost hurts more.

Boris, in comparison, takes some time to get used to living in Russia once more. Last time it was a very short stint, but this will surely be long term. Luka leaves him to help his mother settle in for the first week, but on the Sunday, four days after arriving, he says to Boris, “With two more mouths to feed, we’re going to need more money coming in, da?”

“Of course,” Boris replies, even though he’d rather go back to school than get a job. He knows that wouldn’t help anyone, though.

“Here is my idea; you come work for me in my workshop. Give me extra hand.” He knows almost nothing about what Luka does for a living, and given how badly he treated himself in Las Vegas (i.e the drugs, the malnutrition, the lack of physical exercise) he’s not sure that he’ll actually be all that helpful. Luka, noticing Boris’ confused silence only arches an eyebrow and asks, “You know much about making furniture?”

Boris remembers every drunken lecture Theo had given him about the care of antique furniture, what made it a genuine antique, so much bullshit about wood grains and uneven wear. Most of it won’t mean much in the business of carpentry, as the shit Theo knew was shit you needed to know when selling old-as-balls furniture, not making and selling brand new furniture. He still nods at Luka, and his uncle smiles gently at him.

He starts working with him the next day.

He retains every lesson, every technique, and tip that Luka gives him as he works, and Boris mashes all of them with Theo’s teachings, trying to catch up and be good enough. He wonders if Theo was under pressure to learn all he did, or if it was a reprieve, the way going out to buy lunch each day has become a reprieve. Either way, Luka is happy with Boris’ work, and so are the people who buy from them, so they both bring in steady, decent wages.

The only downside is that Hélène does a valiant job of trying to drink them out of house and home.

Boris, who has made a home on the couch, can hear them arguing quietly sometimes, in the guest room when they think he’s asleep. They hiss at each other in Russian and every so often, his mother will raise her voice just a tad too much, and Luka will hush her and tell her, “This is not over.”

His mother will scoff and say, “Of _course_ it isn’t, Luke.”

One night, Boris stumbles into the bathroom at three am, craving a drink or a high of some kind, itchy with it. When he switches on the light, his mother is sat against the bathroom cabinets, a bottle of vodka in hand, her eyes bleary from the sudden light.

“You’re up late,” she slurs.

“So are you,” he replies, and wonders which of his efforts in Luka’s workshop went towards the half-empty bottle of Smirnoff in her hand.

“Yes,” Hélène allows, tipping her head to the side, “but _you_ have somewhere to be in the morning. I don’t.”

“You could, if you wanted to.” He tells her, and bites his lip. Every so often, he forgets he’s never known her without the drink. He thinks she may be totally different without it. “If you got better.”

Her eyes are ringed with dark sleep circles, and her skin is far too pale with mistreatment and lack of exposure to the sun. She looks like a ghost as she says, “Borya, I want to be _dead.”_

It hits him in the chest like a strike of some kind, like how he imagines being hit by a truck would feel, the grief, the guilt, the unnerving sense of déjà vu that someone has said that to him before, someone he cared about just as deeply.

Boris frowns at her, tries not to think of Theo, sprawled out in the sand and fighting Boris’ attempts to get him upright. _“I_ want you to live,” he says, softly. “I know your love is painful, and you’re at peace with that. You’ll have to come to understand that _my_ love is selfish.”

He goes back to the couch and tries to sleep despite the itch and the guilt.

A month after arriving back in Russia, Luka finally puts his foot down. Boris is just shocked that he’s there when it happens. “Helen, you must stop this!” He says, quietly. Boris is making dinner in the kitchen while they hover in the living room. “I cannot believe you! You are given a second chance, and all you do with it is live the exact life you were living before just in a different place! If papa could see you-“

“Papa allowed this to happen!” She snaps back, sounding tired. Boris pretends he’s not listening. “Papa thought I was mature enough to abandon my career and follow Volodymyr to Poland when I was _sixteen!_ He never said a word against me, never asked if that was what I really wanted!”

Boris glances over his shoulder; his mother is slumped in on herself, her arms folded against her chest, while Luka is shaking his head, looking pained and exasperated. “To be fair, you’ve always known what you want,” he tells her, reaching out for her hands, as if to placate her. “He didn’t think _that_ was any different.”

Hélène’s nostrils flare and she takes a step away from him, spitting, “Well, _you_ obviously hated it! Why didn’t _you_ stop me?”

“I would have if I’d known you weren’t coming back!” Luka cries turning away from her, deeply upset. Now Boris can see the resemblance — as Luka curls in on himself, eyes squinty as he pushes back tears, black curls hanging in his face. Now they are siblings, fighting to make sense of their lives back together again.

Hélène scoffs and sits down on the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Doesn’t do me much good now, does it?” She says, lowly.

There’s a long pause. By now they must have realised he can hear them pretty clearly. Boris does the polite thing and begins to leave the room. Luka drops down on the couch beside her and says softly, “Helen, _please._ If not for me, do it for Boris.” He stops in the hallway at the mention of his name, and listens closely for the rest of his uncles plea. “He brought you here to save you — he needs his mama. I don’t think you know the lengths he went to bring you home, to keep you alive and with him. Don’t throw that away down the neck of a bottle. It’s not worth it.”

The next evening, she meets them at the dinner table, fully sober and looking exhausted, and she says she’s going to rehab. Boris is skeptical towards her dedication, but he says nothing on the matter. It’s easier if he just nods politely, the way Theo used to. They see her off the next day and promise to visit every weekend.

Boris tells Luka about Theo, about his moods and his knowledge on art history and antique furniture, about the bombing, about what made him Boris’ best friend, and all the shit he put him through. Luka always smiles coyly whenever Boris mentions Theo, but he never says anything about it, which works fine, thank you very much. Even if he is reading too far into the stories, seeing the reality of their friendship, the reality Theo refused to acknowledge, Boris is fine with it, because he hasn’t said or done anything about it. That sort of shit, the shit he and Theo had done under the guise of being too high or drunk to really comprehend what they were doing, the guise of _this is practice for when we have girlfriends,_ is enough to get you killed here.

(Back in Vegas, their company ignorant burnouts who called them fags just for hanging out together, Boris was almost safer there, in that respect.)

Boris is just glad his uncle doesn’t really care.

~

His mother’s still in rehab when Boris gets back from his lunch break and Luka is holding a letter tensely, face scrunched in frustration and resignation.

“What?” Boris asks, and passes his uncle the sandwich he bought for him.

Luka sets down the letter and sits back on his stool, picking up the sandwich, grimacing. “We’re getting evicted.”

Boris just stares.

“Landlord doesn’t like me much, can’t think why, wants me out. We’re going to have to find work elsewhere, I’m afraid.” Luka chews sadly on a bite of his sandwich and Boris grimaces. There’s not many honest options for them. And it’s vital that they continue working so they’ll have the money to support Hélène in rehab. He thinks he knows what to do. The trick will be talking Luka into it.

“I have an idea,” he says after a minute. Sometimes words won’t come when he wants them to. He can think them perfectly in his head, over and over, like a shouted song through a blown out speaker he can hear it, but his tongue is heavy and his lips stay firmly pressed together and he has to fight silently to regain his voice. It happens more often than he’d like to admit.

Luka doesn’t look at him, just keeps eating, but asks all the same, “And what’s that?”

He sits down gingerly on his own stool, and steeples his fingers together, saying, “Well, people around here trust you, don’t they.”

His uncle cocks his head and his face scrunches with cautious consideration. “I suppose.”

“You’re a good man, make an honest living, and you’re a great carpenter as well,” Boris picks up the discarded sandwich paper on the table and begins to tear it in his anxiety. I’ll bet in the time you’ve been working you’ve made a lot of good allies.”

It’s clear Luka’s caught on, because his face goes blank and there’s a warning in his tone when he says, “Boris.”

“Point is,” Boris continues, hurriedly, trying to get this across before he’s cut off. “People trust you. And they’d trust you with the things they value, right?”

“I’m not going to become a criminal to save us from debt,” Luka says.

“There’s nothing criminal about holding onto something for someone or taking it somewhere for them,” he says in an easy tone, hoping not to let on just how much he knows about criminal activity.

“Being a fence is dangerous business. Getting involved in that kind of bullshit is dangerous business. You can’t comprehend what would happen if we were caught, if we made a mistake and lost the trust of someone high up. It’s too risky. And we have no way to start up such a business.”

Boris makes a face at that, and against his better judgement retorts, “What if I told you I had something valuable for you to hold onto for me?”

Luka leans close, his face blank and his hand gone still on the edge of the table. “Boris, look at me. What on earth are you talking about?”

Boris leads him upstairs and opens his suitcase, digging under the lining for the newspaper wrapped painting. He lays it down carefully on the kitchen table and slowly opens it.

Luka just stares at the little bird for a moment, once it’s been bared to the open air for the first time since Boris day staring at it in his room after replacing his civics textbook behind Theo’s headboard. That was months ago. Now the little finch can breathe again, now Boris feels both weightless — having finally told someone of his mortal sin — and utterly leaden, sinking to the bottom of the ocean of his guilt and regret. But if it saves them, maybe it was meant to be then, right?

Luka’s fists clench and Boris instinctively takes a step away from him. “Where did you get this?” He asks softly.

“Theo, he was in that bombing in New York, in 2003,” he pauses, just to make sure Luka remembers the context of all Theo’s trauma, and then continues when his uncle nods. “The only thing he could save from the wreckage, besides himself, was this little bird. He was afraid to give it back because they might think he’d actually stolen it, instead of the truth, which was that he wanted to rescue it.”

Luka hums, “And how did it end up with _you?”_

“I stole it. I thought he’d notice — maybe he has by now, I replaced it with one of my textbooks wrapped in newspaper — but I guess he didn’t remember showing it to me, and he never asked me about it. I kept thinking I’d give it back, but then he left so suddenly that I didn’t get a chance.”

“Borya,” Luka says, and there’s so much disappointment in his voice it makes him want to go back to America, to New York, find Theo right now and give it back, beg for forgiveness on his knees and know how betrayed Theo would feel, torture himself with that knowledge.

“I’m sorry,” Boris says quietly, and he means it.

“Good. But most of all, be sorry for your friend, who has lost something that cannot be replaced.” Hes unsure if Luka means the rarity of the painting itself, or what it meant to Theo, for he had explained it to Boris when he showed it to him on Thanksgiving. “For now, though, thank you.”

Boris looks up sharply, and finds his uncle appraising the painting with a hopeful glint in his eye. “What?” He asks.

“You’re right,” Luka says. “This could save us.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m generally against criminal activity, but if we start with people we can trust, maybe we won’t have to expand.” It’s far too optimistic to be true, but if it helps him decide to do it, Boris won’t question it. “Your mama won’t like this too much, either, but she’ll get used to it.”

“So we’re doing it?” Something warm blooms in his chest and he doesn’t even flinch when Luka hugs him to his side.

“I suppose we are,” Luka replies, and smiles.

~

The little bird saves them, though Hélène and Luka always say it was him. Him and Theo. They always thank Theo when they talk about how close they came to losing everything.

Boris wonders if Theo would find it funny that he’s a household name at the Pavlikovsky’s nowadays, while only barely knowing half the inhabitants. He probably wouldn’t, and because of that, it would be hysterical to Boris. As it is, it’s been eight years since they parted ways in Las Vegas, and Boris has thought of Theo every single day since. He’s googled him a few times, too. There’s always something new to find about him, despite Theo’s general aversion towards the media.

(He mostly thinks of Theo now as a strange form of torture, like a bump that immediately scrapes the back of his throat with razors. It’s nice to recall it but it mostly reminds him of his wrongdoings and how he will probably never see Theo again. Boris wonders if maybe he’s a masochist for indulging in such thoughts so often.)

The morning he googles him and finds an engagement announcement to one Katherine Barbour, Boris is sullen, and his mother and uncle give him a wide berth as they go about their business.

He doesn’t live with them anymore, just visits quite often, on business. Technically, he’s living in Antwerp, nowadays, running the family business remotely, running around with their little bird, but he misses them a lot, so he visits as often as possible.

Boris does a lot of travel these days. People are always needing a chauffeur for their valuables and Boris is more than happy to drop the painting with them for a few days, under the careful, watchful eyes of Myriam, as he takes things this way and that, before returning, shaking hands, exchanging money, having the painting safely handed back, and leaving it at that.

The job in Miami is supposed to be an easy one. Just some necklaces, needing to be taken from a shipping container and brought to the client. Unfortunately, this particular client is a fan of stolen artwork, and leaves with the painting after whacking Boris and Myriam over the head with the butt of his gun. Luka is of course outraged, and Hélène tells them to come home so they can plan out their next move.

Boris considers it. He looks at Myriam, and she arches an eyebrow, pressing an ice pack to the side of her head. Gyuri meets his eyes in the rear view mirror, briefly. He knows what he has to do.

“Nyet, mamulya,” he says, slowly, and Myriam hums.

“Borya?” Hélène asks, sounding more curious than concerned.

“I have some unfinished business,” Boris continues, “I’ll get the painting back, just give me some time to work it all out.”

She hums, and clicks her tongue, before saying, “Be careful, da?”

“Da, mama,” and while it feels like there’s been a weight lifted off his shoulders, he can now feel some heaviness in his lungs. So he inhales through his nose and adds, “Give my love to Luka.”

“I will.” She tells him and hangs up. Myriam passes him her ice pack and he passes her back her phone.

“Where to, then?” Gyuri asks, casually.

“Airport,” Boris says, stoically, “we’re going to New York.”

“What’s in New York?” Myriam asks, curiously. She probably thinks he means Horst, and he kind of does, given Horst’s connections with Sascha, but there’s something more motivating him.

“Our lord and saviour Theo Decker, of course,” Boris replies, with a grin. They laugh until they get to the airport.

~

Of course, things must then play out terribly.

It takes so long to get even a scrap of information as to where the painting was taken, and given how far the family business has sent him, it’s hard to go sticking his nose in whatever information he can get without being questioned. _Aren’t you a fence, Borya? Why are you looking for Sascha?_

He starts sending Myriam to do the talking, which he trusts her to do, and hangs out in the shadows, listening as closely as he dares, and trying to piece together this mess of a puzzle.

By the time they even bump into Theo, they’re no closer to getting the picture back, and while Theo seems annoyed, he is not as furious as Boris had expected. Boris thought for sure he was taking him away to kill him. It all certainly goes to hell by the time Boris figures out Theo doesn’t know about the painting.

 _Then_ Theo is furious with him, and only comes to Amsterdam to help Boris rescue the painting because he begs. Then the painting is stolen once more, Boris is shot, Theo kills Martin in the parking garage, and when Boris has recovered the painting and comes to tell the good news to Theo, he’s two thirds of the way through his suicide attempt.

So Boris makes him walk up and down the side of the canal until they’re shivering terribly, and gets Gyuri to take them to his apartment in Antwerp.

Theo watches him shoot up on the couch with bloodshot eyes, disheveled and cried out, it seems. “You always said you were smarter than that,” he says, lowly, voice hoarse.

Boris’ head lolls back on the headrest of the couch. He already feels so much better. “I am. This is just a crutch.” His words are already slurring together.

Theo snorts. “Of course it is.”

“I only use on special occasions. It is Christmas, Potter.”

“And you can stop at any time?”

“Of course.” Boris echoes.

He’s silent again, for a moment. Boris’ eyes are fixed on the ceiling. “You know, I always thought it was the vodka that would get you.”

“Why’s that?” He knows the answer, but he wants to hear Theo speak. He’s been so quiet since they’ve been reunited.

“Your parents.”

“Nyet. Mamulya’s clean now.” He looks at him and Theo looks surprised. Boris can’t blame him. He’s just as surprised. “I don’t drink very much anymore.”

Theo snorts in amusement. “Such a _sensible_ addict,” he drawls, sarcastically.

“Don’t be all high and mighty, Mr. Pill Popper,” Boris snaps, rearranging himself on the couch. “You’re not better than me just because you don’t do heroin.”

He thinks that’s the end of it. His eyes close. He doesn’t want to fall asleep while he still feels resentful, but he can’t help it. As much as Theo makes him want to be good, he also brings out the worst in him. He’s not nearly aware enough to startle when he feels Theo’s hand close over his, but he hears the hurt in his voice and aches when he says, “Boris, you’re going to _kill_ yourself.”

“No,” Boris replies, almost a whisper, thinking of all those years ago by the pool when Theo said _I don’t love right._ “That’s _you.”_

~

When he wakes up, he’s in his bed, undressed and tucked in amongst the tangled sheets. Theo is a hazy blob on the other side of the bed, curled in on himself and very purposefully not touching him. Boris wonders why he didn’t just leave him on the couch, and then thinks it’s probably the same reason he pulled that trigger in the parking garage, the same reason he disapproves of the heroin.

After everything, he still cares.

Boris just lies there and watches him as watery day begins to fill the room, the muscles in his back stretching and relaxing as he breathes slowly in his sleep.

He should probably call his mother, and Myriam. Let them know everything’s gone fine. He hasn’t spoken to them since the police notified him of the recovered art pieces and handed him the cheque for his reward money, a number that made him stop breathing for a moment after reading it.

“I can’t marry Kitsey,” comes Theo’s voice, suddenly, from the other side of the bed.

“Hm?” Boris replies, slowly.

“I just…I don’t want to spend my life with someone who will always put me second,” he continues, rolling onto his back and shuffling slightly away when their arms brush. He’s staring at the ceiling, but Boris is watching his face. He always looks so different without his glasses, and of course he’s changed a lot since Vegas, but he’s still Theo and he’s still beautiful. “And I know that’s selfish-“

“Marriage is inherently selfish, Potter,” Boris says, and looks away when Theo frowns and turns to look at him. “That’s what it’s about. If you think you’d be selfish to _call it off,_ you _should_ be calling it off, because it’s obviously not what you want.”

“That’s eloquent for someone who just woke up,” there’s a hint of amusement to his tone, and Boris just wants it to stay, just wants them to be happy and laughing for a bit again before Theo retreats into himself and his sadness once more.

“Who says I just woke up?” Boris shuffles onto his side and holds himself with his elbow on the pillow, hand holding up his head. “I’ve been awake for almost an hour.”

“Doing what?” More frowning. Even now, he still looks so strange without his glasses.

“Thinking,” Boris replies, easily. “It’s been a long time since I have been in bed with you.”

Theo stiffens. “Don’t.”

 _“Don’t_ what?”

“Don’t do that shit.” Theo sits up fully and shoves him, roughly, the same anger that was there when they were younger, the intent of _I want to hurt you so you’ll understand how I’m hurting. I want to hurt you because that’s what I know, and pain is so much easier to understand than anything else. Pain will release you from your high for a minute, and then you’ll_ think. “That _you’re the only boy I’ve been in bed with_ routine. Okay? We were kids, it was a long fucking time ago.”

“I didn’t mean the _sex,_ Potter,” Boris snorts, and shuffles back up onto his side.

“Don’t call me that,” Theo groans, and covers his face with his hands. Boris scowls.

“My god, you just never stop fighting, do you?” He says, keeping on the amused tone, but moving to sit close beside him. “Is it the pills or your ice princess that make you like this?”

Theo shoves him again, but this time Boris shoves back. “Don’t bring Kitsey into this.”

 _“Don’t-don’t-don’t._ Tell me what I _can_ do, and I will.” Theo watches him carefully, leaning away rim him. “I wasn’t talking about the _sex,_ I was talking about sharing a bed with you. I missed it. It’s been a lonely eight years.”

There’s a long pause. Theo’s expression is caught between a childish fondness and genuine surprise. “You’re telling me there was never _anyone else_ in your bed?” The question almost sounds like pity. He knows it’s not what Theo means, but it’s what it sounds like.

(It wasn’t that he couldn’t get anybody else, he had plenty of proof to the contrary. It’s just that he didn’t want anyone in his bed. That felt off limits.)

(He means he missed sharing a bed with _Theo,_ more than he missed sharing a bed. He means he missed Popchyk on Theo'd stomach, and Theo's hands around his wrists, and Theo's face in his neck. He means he mised him, okay?)

“Nyet. I am busy man nowadays,” Boris says, dismissing the notion. “Besides, this seemed special.”

“It’s not special, Boris. People share beds all the time, even with people they barely know, and with people they may not like. It’s a mundane thing to do.”

“Maybe to you,” he says, and lays a hand on Theo’s shoulder. Theo shrugs him off. “Or maybe you didn’t realise how special it was before, that letting just anybody into your bed would ruin it for you.”

“What are you talking about?” He huffs, beginning to climb out to bed, beginning to end this moment. “Are you still high?”

He probably is, that doesn’t matter though. “We’re not talking about that, right now,” he says, and shoves Theo onto his back.

“Boris!” Theo squawks as Boris wrestles his way on top of him, seating himself down on Theo’s stomach. _“What_ are you doing?”

He’s still fighting him, so Boris grabs his wrists and presses them into the pillows, looming over him. “Stop,” he growls, his curls falling in his eyes. Maybe he is still a bit high.

“Get off me,” Theo huffs, still trying to buck Boris off. Boris digs his blunt nails into his wrists, making him freeze.

 _“Look at me.”_ Theo blinks, and the flush in his cheeks deepens. Theo’s skin is so warm under Boris’ touch, his wrists flexing in Boris’s grip, and his hair is tousled and shining in the early morning light. _God,_ he’s missed him. “I don’t want you to go, I don’t want this to end.”

“Boris,” he closes his eyes, and sighs, “I _can’t.”_

“Can’t what?”

“I don’t know!” Theo cries, expression conflicted, tense underneath him.

“You know,” Boris says, conversationally, leaning away, “it doesn’t matter.”

 _“What_ doesn’t?” He asks, annoyed.

“Sex,” he clarifies in a tone he hopes sounds nonchalant. “You don’t want to be with her anyway, so why should it matter? It would be just a little more water under the bridge when it’s all over.”

“But it’s _not_ over, yet,” Theo says, and flexes his wrists in Boris’ grip, once more, “it’s not even _started,_ so I can’t.”

 _“She_ didn’t care that it wasn’t over,” Boris points out.

“Well, she never loved me anyway,” he retorts, offhandedly.

Boris furrows his brows and asks, in a confused tone of voice, “And that makes it _okay?”_

Theo shifts his weight, and by planting his feet against the mattress and heaving through his right shoulder, he manages to roll them over, placing himself above Boris and now pressing Boris’ arms into the pillows. In his movement, he’s come startlingly close to Boris’ face and says, almost sadly, _“Nothing_ is okay, Boris.”

“Oh?” The word comes out breathlessly, and as penance he blushes in embarrassment, hoping Theo’s too caught up in his personal tragedy to not have noticed.

“I’ve made such a mess of things. I don’t even know where to _start_ with fixing things. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fix everything.” Theo states, looking worried and lost. Boris thinks he must still be high, because he doesn’t seem to have the strength to pull out of Theo’s grip. He just wants to touch him. What if Theo leans into his touch like he used to when they were younger? “And the engagement is just another mistake on that pile of things to remedy. If I added _infidelity_ to that pile, I might go insane. I think I’d be too much like my father, then.”

Boris frowns, “You’re nothing like your father.”

“Aren’t I? I drink and I’m a drug addict, and I have a fiancée that I abandoned and now I’m thousands of miles away, in bed with someone else,” and then suddenly Theo meets his eyes and they both just pause, everything pauses, their breaths, his sentence, time itself, and Boris knows that if Theo weren’t engaged right now, he probably would have let Boris kiss him by now. Instead of acknowledging this fact, Theo reers back, releasing Boris entirely and retreats to the other end of the bed. “I’m in so much debt and I’m such a mess and I’m just going to end up like him.”

“You won’t,” Boris continues to protest.

“You don’t know that,” Theo growls, running his fingers through his hair in such a way that Boris worries he’ll begin to rip the strands out by the roots.

“You don’t know that you will,” he says, shuffling over and carefully but firmly taking his hands and pulling them from his hair.

 _“Boris.”_ Theo says, voice full of emotion, and he pulls his hands roughly from Boris’. _“Please_ don’t.”

He can’t help but groan in frustration. What? Now he’s not allowed to even _touch_ him? “Why _not?”_

“Because it’s not _honest.”_ Ah, so they’re back to the infidelity, the sex. It’s always been about the sex, even when they pretended it hadn’t happened and they’d never been that close to each other.

“Kitsey wasn’t honest with you,” he says instead of telling Theo that he just wants to be near him, even if Theo does marry that ice princess. “It would only be fair.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Theo mumbles, gruffly.

“I’m not saying they do, I’m saying she cheated on you and you don’t want to be married to her anyway, so why not?” He pauses. Theo looks up at him, his expression torn, his cheeks flushed and eyes bleary. “Maybe it’s right anyway, maybe it’s always been right.”

He sighs, eyes closing and fists clenching at his sides. “Boris…”

“No, look at me,” and Boris reaches forward, taking Theo’s chin in his hand and making him turn his head in his direction. Theo’s eyes seem to open of their own accord. “Forget it, but listen. That bird brought us back together for a reason. The least we can do is honour the time it’s given back to us.”

He scowls, “You can’t coerce me into having sex with you.”

“I’m not _trying_ to. For fucks sake, I’m not talking about sex, now. I’m talking about how you’re unwilling to be touched unless you’re high or you think it’s what’s expected of you, and that’s bullshit.” The hand holding Theo’s chin slides around to grip the back of his neck, like he had in the parking garage. Theo relaxes into the hold, familiar even now. “You deserve to be touched when you want, how you want, by whomever you want, otherwise there’s no point to life. There’s so much more to life than ice princesses and keeping their mamas happy.”

He shakes his head, “There’s no one-“

“There’s _me.”_

“Boris.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to _start,”_ he whispers, miserably, but Boris can see he’s not denying it anymore.

Boris pulls him close, his thumb lightly rubbing a circle into the skin at the back of Theo’s neck, and touches their foreheads together. “Come with me to St Petersburg, visit my mamulya and my uncle.” Theo’s breath shudders out of him. “No heroin there, I swear.”

Theo closes his eyes and nudges back into Boris’ forehead.

“And then I’ll return you safely back to New York,” he continues, feeling cold even as he says it, as if Theo is a campfire in the cold wilderness, and he’d honestly rather burn than freeze, but what good would that do Theo? “I’ll even stay away forever, if you want me to.”

“No,” Theo says quickly, and grabs at Boris’ biceps. Boris hisses when he squeezes the gullet wound in his arm, and Theo releases him, but looks deeply into his eyes.

“No?” Boris echoes, unsure as to what part exactly Theo is protesting.

“No. I’ll go with you to Petersburg,” his breath shudders again, but this time there’s no pain in his eyes, there’s only hope. “And then you’ll come to New York with me. And you’ll stay.”

“For how long?” He moves to cup Theo’s face, as definitely imagines the way Theo seems to sink into the touch.

“For as long as you want to,” Theo tells him.

“And what about ice princess?” Even as he says it, he knows Theo is no longer concerned by these things. “Your mistakes?”

“I’ll call off the engagement.” Flippant tone, tender emotion in his eyes, soft hands reaching up to cover Boris’. “And I’ll buy back the fakes. I have the money for it, now.”

“I see,” he can barely breathe. It’s not real, is it? It’s a heroin induced dream, everything he ever wanted, swirled into a delicious, lifelike fantasy, right?

“Boris.” He must sense Boris’ doubts that this is real.

“Yes?”

“Do you love me?”

“You are the blood of my heart,” he says, the honesty thick on his tongue, sharp in his teeth, it doesn’t even matter if Theo feels the same, what matters is that he saw enough to ask, “of course I love you.”

~

The next time Theo meets his mother, it’s completely planned. She barely remembers the few times she actually met him in Vegas, but she knows what he sacrificed for their family, even if he didn’t know, and she’s thankful for it.

Hélène and Luka welcome him to their house in St Petersburg with open arms. They enjoy getting to know him over a huge lunch, and Theo smiles and laughs even though he looks a little awkward. He holds Boris’ hand underneath the table and Boris squeezes it reassuringly whenever he thinks he needs it.

They all go for dinner with Myriam and Gyuri and Victor and Shirley, and Theo sinks in his seat a little and blushes when Luka toasts to him for saving their family. Myriam keeps looking between them and grinning as if she knows the complexities of their relationship like the back of her hand, and she knows what they are to each other right now, even if they don’t really know, haven’t really talked about it, yet.

In a way they don’t really need to. It’s already gotten easier, anyway, because now Theo accepts the now-frequent touches Boris instinctively acts upon, and he even touches him back, less frequent but still present. They’ve never been good at talking. They tried to explain themselves to each other over breakfast at the airport before they flew to Petersburg, but there was so much history to wade through, they eventually gave up and sat silently together until the plane took off, companionable silence, mind you.

Boris is already feeling the effects of the heroin withdrawal, and it’ll only get worse in the next few days, but once it’s bearable, then they’ll go to New York. Luka and Hélène have been campaigning for this for a long time, but it felt like a beautiful kind of punishment, _I cannot return Potter’s bird, and until I do I’ll drown in this addiction._ His mother is so pleased when he tells her he’s giving it up.

(She And Luka have been wanting to get into the travelling part of the business anyway, and Myriam is more than capable and very happy to handle the money end. Boris is able to go to New York with Theo with a relatively clear conscience.)

“He’s a good man,” Hélène says, quietly, after dinner.

“He doesn’t think so,” Boris tells her, wincing a little bit. They’re doing the washing up. Her skin has so much more colour these days, and her hair is styled in artful waves, wearing stylish makeup, and nice clothes. She’s so different from the woman he knew in Las Vegas, but the love she barely dared to show there is here now in full force, all the same.

“Poor thing,” she sighs. “I wish I’d been better to you both. Maybe it would have turned out easier.”

“You can’t exist only in regret, mamulya.” He’s oddly struck by the trait she and Theo seem to share. She apologised for infusing her love for him with the pain his father gave them, and Theo excised his distance by saying he was bad at loving people, couldn’t do it right. They regret and grieve their love while they still have it and can work to fix it. He wonders if anyone’s ever told them that, and decides if the answer is no, he’ll do it himself. “You must forgive yourself and strive to treat people better in future.”

“You didn’t have to save me, in Las Vegas,” she says suddenly, her eyes reflecting how clearly she is caught up in the past. “You could have just left me.”

“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Boris protests easily, pulling his hands from the water and shaking them vaguely fryer before taking her hands in his. “And besides, it was all worth it. I’d be nowhere near all this if I hadn’t.”

“Borya,” Hélène says, and smiles. “You have so much love. I don’t know how you don’t explode with it, how you bear it.”

“I’ve always had this much love. I know how to use it now. I’m not scared anymore.”

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, I really hope you liked it :) if you did, please consider leaving me a comment, I’d really appreciate it. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee for Goldfinch memes. Once again, thanks for reading :)


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